Not everything we have eaten in this life was true and necessary. Every country has a gastronomy. Every human being inherits a way of eating that is the daughter of the customs of a community, a town or a culture. Does that way of eating work? Of course. Well, we have not died of hunger and we are healthy. But are there unknown lands in gastronomy, in food? Have we tried everything? What can you eat and what can’t you eat?
We are what we eat and if we lack imagination and enthusiasm, perhaps it is because we have always been eating the same thing for centuries. So my palate, my digestive system, all my physical and moral sensitivity headed towards the unknown.
And on February 23, 2024, I got on a plane from Barcelona that took me to the San Sebastian airport and from there, by bus, a few writers and journalists went to the Mugaritz restaurant, which is located in the heart of nature, between the towns of Errenteria and Astigarraga, in a paradise of forests and orchards and a little rain. And there we were welcomed by chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, accompanied by his team and Paco Plaza, director of the documentary about the mystery of Mugaritz, because the Mugaritz restaurant is, in reality, a mystery.
Suddenly, I felt like I was in the Platonic Academy. Andoni reflected aloud. His collaborators seemed like philosophers. It was all metaphysics of organic matter. I ate chives with butter. I ate cauliflower in fractal form. The vegetable stopped being a vegetable and became a mini-building, a tiny pyramid that fit in my mouth.
We got up, we walked. They showed us the kitchens, the different spaces of the restaurant. They told us about the fermented honeyed yubas. There was a lot of theory, but I just wanted to eat, for all that theory to land in my mouth. As a good Mediterranean, I only like theory if it serves to adorn an erotic practice of existence. A practice of whatever, but practical. I needed to eat it all. Eat everything they taught us.
There was also a great dissertation on wines, on the thoughtful pairings between wines and gastronomy. I was about to drink again, because I stopped drinking on June 9, 14. I couldn’t try the wines because I’m an ex, but it’s the same, I imagined how they would invade my palate and in an act of magic I drank, I drank all of them. the wines that were offered to us.
Then the verdinas arrived. Then came a mullet turned into a kind of Caravaggio painting. But before he had tried cow brains. They were gelatinous and humble. I saw an imaginary conversation between the cows and the mullets. And in my stomach there was a celebration of foods never before present in my sad body, which had lived a tedious and routine gastronomic life, a shameful monogamy.
I felt ashamed of having always eaten the same thing. I know that my body sent messages to my intelligence. He sent telegrams of love. My organs said: we had never turned these foods, these wonders, these meats and these fish into blood. It seems, dear Vilas, that your life is improving, because we are what we eat. The mullet was an exaltation of the mullet. It was not an anonymous mullet in the millennia-old history of mullets. It was the mullet. The world’s first mullet. He was the archetype of the mullet.
Every time I ate it, the mullet spoke to me: do you realize that I am a plastic, orgiastic, erotic work of art? In a museum you can’t eat a Velázquez, you can’t eat a Van Gogh, you can’t eat a Picasso. But I was eating art made flesh and sea. And then came the gizzard and watercress. And then I realized the greatness of my body, that my body is a wonderful unique creation of the universe, capable of eating all the gastronomic force of Andoni Luis Aduriz’s imagination.
Be careful, Aduriz, I can eat everything you invent, because I was understanding everything. Not only can I eat anything you dream of, I also understand it. I understand what I’m eating. Aduriz talked about each dish. I thought about the men of the Renaissance, I thought about Leonardo da Vinci. Very well, you speak. I, in silence, eat everything that your fantasy has been able to invent.
And the apotheosis was the animal tiramisu. She entered and wandered in my mouth like a black hole wanders through the background radiation of the universe. It was pork, but it was also cake, it was sweet, but it had an origin in blood and the blackness of salt. It was an alchemical tiramisu. The pig screamed in my gut and the sweet cake it had become rescued that scream and turned it into a eucharist.
I left Mugaritz wanting to return. What did Mugaritz give me? Freedom, that’s what it gave me. We are what we eat, but who decides what we eat. When you are in love with life, all of life is an edible mystery. A prayer for you, Aduriz, please continue expanding life, I thank you. My body is already different. And my soul is free.
